Oooh what larks. An eco resort. Sounds such fun don't it? And so right on. However it's only a matter of time before I discover that my view of 'eco' is formed by reading the Sunday supplements, and apparently bears little relation to real life.(why, oh why, is this always such a surprise to me?)

In my world 'eco' involves nothing more arduous than wafting around a white sand beach, pausing only to dip my elegant chanel-painted toes into the turquoise waters that lick the shores of the magnificently sweeping beach. I am wearing a kaftan woven by hand-reared silkworms and decorated by charming native tribespeople on some fairtrade scheme. When not wafting I am to be found lounging on an ethically harvested softwood daybed draped in organic cotton sheets fragranced with the aroma of pesticide-free lavender oil lovingly pressed in some Tuscan grove whilst sipping a freshly squeezed fruit juice and reading my book.

But first we have to get to this blissful paradise, which first involves a boat from Koh Yao Yai to Krabi and then a taxi ride across town to what we assume is the pier our next boat leaves from, but no, that would be way too simple wouldn't it? It seems our taxi driver has brought us to a travel agent who is going to sell us a ticket and then transport us back across town to the actual pier. Although it takes us a while to work that one out. It's a slick operation - there are a couple of dozen of us similarly hoodwinked, all hanging around waiting for this non-existent boat until we realise the inevitable truth, nothing is straightforward and everyone has to have their percentage. Should have known.

And so finally we get driven in a clapped-out minibus to the bustling harbour, where there is one boat a day leaving for Koh Lanta via Koh Jum and we all clatter aboard with our over-sized suitcases and daypacks stuffed full of paperbacks, suncream and bottles of water. We're not amused to discover as we reach the point of boarding that we have to stand aside and let everyone else on before us as we are getting off halfway through the journey and they want our luggage to be on last so it can be swiftly unloaded. And so we are shuffled away from our pole position near the front of the queue and forced to stand in the full glare of the fierce mid-day sun like poor little orphan children watching all the slow, feet-dragging people who were once behind us in the queue saunter onto the boat, find themselves a nice comfy seat in the shade and crack open their sandwiches. All we can do is look longingly on and hope that there is a spare bit of floor for us to perch on when they deign to let us on.If we haven't collapsed from sun blindness by then.

Just over an hour later the cry of 'Koh Jum, Koh Jum' goes up and we headed for the deck and our first sight of the barely inhabited island. To our surprise there is no pier, just a flotilla of small long-tailed boats circling our ferry and jostling for position to moor up next to it in mid-sea. The next thing we knew our luggage was being flung off the side of the boat and into one of these waiting motorized canoes and we were expected to follow. Brian narrowly avoided heart failure as his suitcase, containing all known copies of the film and his prized travelling sock collection nearly didn't make it. Sadly I was not looking in the right direction when the event occurred, but having had it graphically described to me now many times over the course of the last few days I almost feel like I was there.

Our little boat then transported us to our home for the next week - the Koh Jum Resort, aka a little piece of eco heaven. If the Trade Descriptions Act was in force out here they would not get away with such hyperbole.

Firstly we were taken to a bamboo hut on stilts with a rickety old bamboo floor and just about enough floor space to walk single-file either side of the bed. I won't go into any detail about the unsavoury bathroom arrangements, in case you are reading this whilst eating your breakfast. This was very definitely NOT the spacious, light-filled teak villa that I had booked. Oh no.

A dusty, sweaty seethe back to reception and I was informed, with many grovelling apologies, that our luxury villa had a broken toilet that would be fixed by tomorrow and they would not charge us for the night's accommodation. As I lay in a sodden and perspiring coma on the bed trying to catch the odd waft of warm air from the fan, limply gesturing for just a sip of water I started to conjure up images of Tenko. Brian, preferring to channel Rumpole of the Bailey, marched back to reception and demanded to see the room with the alleged broken toilet. Hurrah, my hero, perhaps he could fix it. But no, finally the full horror of the dastardly plot was revealed. There was no villa. There was no broken toilet. There were just lies, deception and a shimmering wall of unbearable heat in a bamboo shoebox.

Until tomorrow that is; they promised us faithfully that we would get our villa the very next day. We were too weak with heat exhaustion to argue. And with only one boat a day off the island we were marooned, Robinson Crusoe-like. But with the added advantage of beer.

We did move the next day into our spacious villa, but it was not the luxury we had been pining for. The TV had a hundred and one channels, but they appeared to be reserved for badly acted thai soap operas. The 'aircon' unit was merely a recycler of warm air.It is too hot to move, to think to breathe. Being in the jungle we are assailed by weird low-flying insect life, our room is home to a family of giant buzzing cockroach mutants, there is a dead gecko in the bathroom and gecko poo appears daily on the bedsheets (they may be cotton but they're very bobbly and, although clean, still slightly stained with odd, old memories of ear wax and hair oil). As if that wasn't enough our bed is being attacked every night by some sort of silent chomping insect that leaves piles of freshly drilled sawdust in random piles around the perimeter.

There is no swimming pool and when the tide goes out every day the beach is covered in rocks and it's impossible to swim. This is the low point of our trip so far and with no freezer at hand we can't even comfort ourselves with an ice cream sundae. Times are truly tough; I have to conclude that the eco life is not for me. We are not bamboo hutters, and never will be again. Even Brian has been forced to admit that we may be young, free and parsimonious but our list of requisites now includes air conditioning, swimming pools and banana splits. He's also voting for BBC World and English football channels but, as always, he's getting too pernickety.